Few people in the US are more successful than Bill Gates. But that doesn’t mean the billionaire knows everything. There are still important business lessons to be learned by America’s richest man -and who better to learn them from than Gates’ friend and fellow billionaire Warren Buffett? Earlier this year Gates traveled to Omaha for Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholders meeting. He outlined the three most important lessons he learned from Buffett.

Look at the Big Picture

When Gates first met Buffett, his immediate instinct was to focus on the surface of his success: picking and investing in stocks. But Gates quickly learned that key to Buffett’s success runs much deeper -it’s about the big picture of a business. “He has a whole framework for business thinking that is very powerful,“ Gates writes.

One day Buffett went up to his pilot named Steve and jokingly said to him that “the fact that you’re still working for me tells me I’m not doing my job.You should be out going after more of your goals and dreams.”

To help him with that, Buffett asked Steve to list the 25 most important things he wanted to do in his life.Then Buffett asked Steve to review each goal and choose the five most crucial ones.After considering a moment, Steve drew circles around five fantastic goals, confirming with Buffett that yes, indeed, they were his highest priorities.

“And the rest?What about these other 20 things on your list that you didn’t circle?” Buffett asked. “What is your plan for completing those?” Steve knew just what to say.”Well, the top five are my primary focus but the other 20 come in at a close second,” the pilot said. “They are still important so I’ll work on those intermittently.”

Buffett suddenly turned serious.”You’ve got it wrong, Steve,”he said.”Everything you didn’t circle just became your ‘avoid at all costs’ list. No matter what, these things get no attention from you until you’ve succeeded with your top five.”Read more of this post